On the Africa geography matter, my guess is the same as Daniel’s: it’s probably untrue that she didn’t know Africa was divided into numerous countries, just like it’s an exaggeration to attribute to her the claim that Russia was visible from her house, whereas she was simply claiming that Russia is visible from parts of Alaska (parts that she’s never visited apparently, not that this would have made her claim to being qualified in foreign affairs due to her state’s geographical proximity to an unpopulated Siberian outpost any less preposterous). Nevertheless, these are the sorts of things that get repeated and “stick” because they’re embellishments of underlying impressions of candidates. In Palin’s case she has an, IMHO, well-earned reputation as a pathological liar, diva and bullshitter, and thus urban legends like these seem plausible to the masses.

It’s likewise false to attribute to Al Gore a claim to have invented the Internet, but since he has a reputation for exaggerating his role in things, and since the urban legend is an embellishment of a claim to have helped “create” the Internet while he was in Congress, it will persist, even if most people who joke about it know it’s not literally true. Like many of the delusions suffered by mentally ill people, exaggerations like these have a basis in reality.

The reason Palin probably thought it was reasonable to ask to speak after McCain’s concession is that she simply had no idea that this isn’t done, that no losing VP candidate had ever given such a speech before, and that it would be seen as being in very poor taste. This simply confirms how ignorant and out of touch she is with the general norms of political society in the lower 48. On the other hand, this example of her ignorance shows how her instincts are all self-serving, ego-maniacal, and bordering on the infantile. It’s the kind of request a child would make who simply didn’t know better. I think we have to see Palin in that light, as an ignorant and somewhat self-obsessed child who simply doesn’t know better, and can’t be expected to know better, until they grow up. We don’t expect children to know much about the world, in part because they are so much more interested in themselves and their immediate relations, and haven’t had the time to expand the sphere of their interests to the much wider world. The question is, if she’s this immature at the age of 44, how much maturity can we expect of her in another 4-8 years? How much real interest in the wider world can we hope she will develop in that time? Let’s face it, some people never get over their own narcissism and become interested in other people to any serious degree, and they never learn about them as a consequence. Palin’s lack of knowledge about the world should be seen as a symptom of this deeper failing in her character.

I don’t privilege either set of tales very highly, but the diva-persona meshes more with reports from out of Alaska from people who have put their names out there speaking of her pre-VP days.

If I were intent on simply mocking Palin, there are many other things–the stupid business about the clothes, the prank call, etc.–that I could have spent time on. I believe I am no more caustic or “mean” in my criticisms of her than I am in criticisms of other public figures when I find some flaw in them. If you find some genuine double standard, show it to me and I will try to correct for it.

I don’t take the trivial pseudo-scandal things about her seriously, and I don’t waste your time with them, because they ultimately don’t mean very much. I think it is remotely possible that the claims against her in this story are true, or at least partly true, and that is something that the public and conservatives in particular should know before they opt to make her into their champion/martyr/whatever. A significant part of this post was to ridicule the tendency of her more enthusiastic pundit supporters to make outlandish justifications for her mistakes.

A lot of people thought it was amusing and cute that Bush called the Greeks “Grecians” and didn’t know the names of foreign leaders–after all, how many average Americans knew the answers?–and then we discovered the hard way that someone poorly informed about the rest of the world tended to make poorly informed decisions about important policy matters relating to foreign affairs. Palin is being seriously feted in some circles on the right as a possible future presidential candidate and possible nominee in as little as four years; it matters whether she knows these things and many other things besides these. Had more people been a little more “mean-spirited” (i.e., critical and skeptical) about Bush’s lack of curiosity and lack of knowledge, we might have avoided some of the calamities that have befallen us in the last eight years.

That was my thinking behind this post, and that’s why I think this is not a post that should drive anyone away. I try to offer my honest views here, and I try to entertain as many other views as possible, and I would hope that whatever is worthwhile about this blog cannot be undone by one post out of the thousands upon thousands I have written here.

Of course, the chances of nominating Snowe for President are presumably zero. But she really may be your last, best hope. If you do nominate Palin in 2012, you will lose far more independents than you did this year. Assuming Obama does a better job than Bill Clinton did, he’ll be able to take all comers. And if the Democrats are smart enough to nominate Brian Schweitzer in 2016…you could be looking at a long time in the wilderness.

Come to think of it, other Palinphiles have compared her to Joan of Arc. And McCain’s campaign was always talking about the “last charge”, the Alamo, etc. during the campaign, McCain himself being obviously associated with the Vietnam War. Thrown in the Republican Southern Strategy and the Party’s lurch into the gutter of White resentment politics, and it seems clear: the GPO has become a party for losers and those who identify with losers.

You’re “sure” she said things? You “have a feeling” ? Granted, this is all gossip and should be taken with a tablespoon of salt, but still, doesn’t the Couric interview make it plausible? It is pretty widely known that Americans as a whole are terrible with geography. Palin herself bounced around 5 different undergraduate colleges before getting a degree in sports journalism. Considering her cringeworthy performance in interviews, why is it not plausible?

Let me guess. You like her. You identify with her small town roots. Maybe you’re a woman and really are wowed by the symbolism of what the vice presidency meant with a woman at the post. Or maybe you’re a man and you’re sexually attracted to her. Either way, those qualities of who she is has nothing to do with her qualifications for office. It is not an indictment of her way of life. She just isn’t ready, and it blatantly showed.

If you will quit reading this blog because of Sarah Palin, you have bigger problems.

I’m a bit disappointed in this post. I think you’ve become rather vindictive and mean regarding Sarah Palin.

Seriously, it makes you look petty.

You basically write that while you think Sarah Palin knows Africa is a continent, it wouldn’t surprise you if she did not.

Come on, that’s cheap.

I have a feeling what happened is that she slipped and said something like “Africa the country” etc just like Obama said there were “53 states”….

The book to read here is Fraser’s Marie Antoinette. I think the “Africa” comment has a “let them eat cake” feel to it….and I’m sure just as she never said “I can see Russia from my house”, it will enter into the collective of conventional wisdom.

A pity, because I actually enjoyed reading this blog- I think not anymore.

I think you could more profitably troll another site and another comments section. This is the website of a magazine co-founded by a man who left the GOP and subsequently ran for president against George W. Bush in 2000 as a third-party candidate. It’s the blog of a man who does not and has not supported George W. Bush, and who is not a Republican.

I can’t speak for the other posters here, but I became disgusted with Bush and the GOP during Bush’s first term and have not called myself a Republican in nearly five years. So if you’re looking to offend people by shrieking about the various deficiencies of the modern Republican Party you’ll have more fun doing it elsewhere.

I wonder whether it is possible that many of these people are good people who went to work for McCain because they truly respected him and believed in his cause, only to find themselves thrust, through no choice of their own, into a totally unanticipated Alice-Through-the-Looking-Glass universe in which they were forced to put a good face on a Veep candidate who at every turn said or did something that made her nomination more unpalatable and McCain’s judgment more questionable. It seems to me possible that some people might have found themselves struggling with a difficult and unexpected moral dilemma: the desire on the one hand to stand loyal to the man and cause they first undertook to support, and on the other hand a desire to stand for sanity, reason, and integrity. I can imagine that someone who genuinely believed in McCain, but also genuinely believed that it was mortifyingly foolish to promote someone as ill-informed and unadept as Sarah Palin as a legitimate candidate to step into the most powerful job in the world, might find him or herself mired in a truly terrible morass of indecision and worry.

In such a case, it seems to me possible that some people might, now that no further harm can be done to the McCain cause, choose a sort of better-late-than-never route to salvaging some self-respect by telling the truth. I have no idea whether that is what has happened; I do not pretend to have any actual information on the subject. Nor do I mean to try to decide here whether such a course of decision-making would be either wise or just. But if we are looking for a reasonable explanation of why McCain campaign staffers might reveal unpalatable truths about Sarah Palin now that the campaign is over, it does seem to me entirely plausible that some of them, having initially chosen loyalty over truth, might have suffered real pangs of guilt over that choice and might now try to assuage those feelings by offering the truth late in the game. I doubt that such a choice has any power to make someone feel much better in the long run; if you’re in the position of having to try to redress an error of judgment on a moral issue, you’ve already acknowledged to yourself that your choice was wrong, but it is the sort of thing that people do.

I offer the suggestion by way of demonstrating that what we are seeing in the revelations about Palin as a member of the McCain campaign doesn’t necessarily have to be a mere matter of sour grapes or petty, vindictive, in-fighting. It MIGHT be, at least in part, an example of the way people behave when they try to cope with extremely difficult moral dilemmas.